Arizona CCEC (Citizens Clean Elections Commission) hosted 2 debates last week in Southern Arizona:
LD 2 Senate and House at the Hilton Garden Inn on Sept. 27: State Senator Andrea Dalessandro (D) vs. Republican challenger Shelley Kais; Representative Chris Ackerley (R), Representative Rosanna Gabaldon (D) & Daniel Hernandez Jr. (D) vying for 2 seats in the House of Representatives
View this LD 2 debate online here:
LD 14 Senate and House at the Benson City Council Chambers on Sept. 28: Democratic State Senate candidate Jaime Alvarez; 2 open seats in the House being sought by Mike Holmes (D), Drew John (R), Jason Lindstrom (D), and Becky Nutt (R).
LD 14 State Senator Gail Griffin (R) did not attend, and she is not a clean elections candidate.
Southern Arizona Legislative candidates arranged by the total amount they raised by June 1, 2016. The percentage of PAC funds is given at the top of each column. Green bars are Clean Elections candidates. (Source data: SOS Campaign Finance system.)
June 30 was the deadline for statewide and legislative candidates to file their campaign finance reports. Data nerds like me love slogging through the Secretary of State’s website for Ah-Ha moments of discovery. And there are some.
Remaining funds for each Southern Arizona Legislative candidate, after reported expenses have been subtracted. Green bars are Clean Elections candidates. (Source data: SOS Campaign Finance system.)
My primary reason for looking at these data was, of course, to gauge my campaign against others in Southern Arizona. For nearly a year, people have been telling me not to run as a Clean Elections (CE) candidate because “it’s just not enough money.” These two graphics show a somewhat different picture.
The top graphic shows that Daniel Hernandez (D-LD2) blew the doors off the fundraising barn by gathering $60,437, but Hernandez spent $25,489 to get there, leaving him with $34,948 on July 1. (Yes, of course, he can keep dialing for dollars every day from now until November 8, but that is a lot of time and manpower.) Ana Henderson (R-LD9) with $21,345 is the Clean Elections candidate with the most funds on July 1; she has spent only $1,367. You can see how the difference between these two candidates flattened out when you take into consideration the money Hernandez had to spend to raise $60,000. (Since Clean Elections has strict rules on how much we can collect in seed money and family money and how we receive once we have qualified for public funds, all of the candidates who have qualified for CE have roughly the same amount. Note the green bars on both graphs. (Fun fact: all of the qualified CE candidates in Southern Arizona are women.)
Let’s compare Hernandez to the other two candidates in the LD2 Democratic Party primary.
Arizonans for a New Economy has been working on public banking initiatives in Arizona since 2011.
Austerity is a lie.
We have plenty of money.
The problem is that it is being gambled on Wall Street, instead of being invested on Main Street.
That is the message of public banking.
The State of Arizona– and 48 other states– allow billions of dollars in taxpayer funds to be invested for the benefit of Bank of America, JP Morgan CHASE, Wells Fargo, and other Wall Street banks who our hold rainy day funds. Shareholders in those “too-big-to-fail” banks make money on OUR money, while we are told to “tighten our belts”. The only state whose economy didn’t crash in 2008-09 was North Dakota because the State of North Dakota created a public bank in 1919 and invests its money at home, rather than allowing Wall Street to invest ND funds for the benefit of Wall Street shareholders. Forty percent of the world’s banks are public banks, but there is only one in the US because our country and our government are controlled by Wall Street.
Public banking advocates across the country are working on state and municipal public banking initiatives. Public banking initiatives have been proposed by both Republicans and Democrats in multiple sessions of the Arizona Legislature. This year, there are multiple bills addressing public banking and/or the health of community banks in Arizona.
The most promising bill is SB1395, proposed by Southern Arizona Senator Andrea Dalessandro, a long-term public banking advocate which would establish a task force to study the feasibility of establishing a state bank of Arizona. SB1395 will be heard by the Senate’s Financial Institutions Committee on Wednesday, February 18, 2015.
Screen capture from a video by Phoenix videographer Dennis Gilman. Full video below.
“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness… — US Declaration of Independence
Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame, With conquering limbs astride from land to land; Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame. “Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!” cries she With silent lips. “Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”
— Emma Lazarus’ poem inscribed on the Statue of Liberty
… One nation, under God, with liberty and justice for all.
— US Pledge of Allegiance
It sucks when our national public relations story doesn’t match our actions.
On Monday– just a few days after the US celebrated the signing of the Declaration of Independence– our government released a statement saying that thousands of the unaccompanied child refugees who crossed the US-Mexico border fleeing violence and seeking safety and family members will likely be deported.
This is unconscionable. If we send these children back home to die, we must scratch Emma Lazarus’ poem off the Statue of Liberty and take “God” out of our political speech.
